


Hello Goodbye

by dancinbutterfly



Category: Across the Universe (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-16
Updated: 2008-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:20:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1628786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The weeks before Max leaves for Vietnam go a little bit differently than in the movie when Jude gets together with Max instead of Lucy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hello Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Written for d_generate_girl

 

 

Max sits cross-legged on Jude's bed, cigarette dangling loosely from his fingers. He doesn't need to be in here, but there's this gnawing fear in the pit of his stomach that's been building on itself since he opened the envelope from the army earlier tonight, and he really doesn't want to be alone. And Jude gets that. Which is why he's chosen to not be alone with Jude. One why at least.

"So, you think it'd work?" 

Jude blinks at him. "What's that?"

"If I tell the army I'm a homo. Do you think they'll let me stay home?"

Jude takes a smoke, giving himself time to think. Max's never known Jude to lie to him so he figures he's probably figuring out a way to answer that's not going to scare him even more while still being honest. 

"I dunno," Jude finally says. "'Suppose it could."

"It's worth a shot. Anything's worth a shot. I shouldn't be going over there in the first fucking place. I'm a lover, not a fighter."

Jude laughs. The sound pushes at some of the fear, makes it smaller, farther away. "That you are, mate."

"You think it'll matter if it's true or not? Like maybe they can tell?" Max asks. He knows Jude has no idea. Things work different in England. But he wants Jude to keep talking, and he's remarkably quiet tonight. Like maybe he's scared too. 

Max scoots himself closer to reach for Jude's cigarette as his own burns out. His fingers brush Jude's as he takes the cigarette from him, sending shivers up Max's spine. The electricity feels true.

"No idea," Jude sighs, shaking his head. 

He bumps Max with his shoulder as he moves to take back his smoke but Max holds it away, making him lean over, across him. So close they're breathing the same air. 

"I guess it won't matter if it's true," Max whispers, breathing deep, feeling Jude all warm and brown over him. 

"Is it?" Jude asks, his lips practically touching Max's as they move. 

Max lifts his head half an inch and the answer is yes. Jude's lips are still open and he slides inside with the same ease as Jude walked into his life. It's safe here. Sane. True. Reality solidifies for Max as he kisses Jude and Jude kisses him. 

Jude pulls back and plucks the cigarette from Max's hands. He grinds the glowing butt out against the wall and falls back on Max. It's new, the feel of someone bigger, taller, broader on top of him. It should be oppressive and smothering. 

It's not. It's exhilarating and liberating. It's wild without being dangerous and it's good without hurting, and he and Jude shed clothing like snakes shed skin. They just climb right out of them and back into each other. 

It's different than being with a woman. It's better. It's the best because it's Jude, all pale skin and dark eyes and fractured smile.

His hands are calloused from gripping pencils and charcoal are wrapping around him with just the right amount of tightness. Beneath Max's lips is a flat chest with small nipples and the groove of his hip is hard, wet softness that he has to struggle to reach.

Jude rains kisses on his skin, whispering to him in that accent that's had him spellbound since day one, and Max is happy. This is better than free love because this he's earned and cultivated. He's gotten many things for free in his life and none of them has felt as good as this. Life and all its ugly shit can't touch this. It won't. It wouldn't dare.

"Jude, I ... I-"

"I know," Jude murmurs. His body is shaking on Max. He's pulsing in Max's hand. But he manages to keep his rhythm steady. "I know, Max. I'm here."

And he is. So fucking present. Max manages to get his eyes open, and all he can see is himself reflected in beauty in brown eyes and he's coming apart, coming, dying, living, loving Jude so much it's a wonder he hasn't exploded. 

He's twitching only a little when Jude finally comes apart. He reaches a tired hand up, sliding it around the back of Jude's neck to press their foreheads together, watching as closely as he can as his lover breaks, shatters. It's amazing. It makes him wish he could do half the things Jude can do with a pencil and paper.

Jude's arms give and he collapses on Max, his face pressed into the mattress next to Max's head. He's heavy. He's hot. They're both sticky. Max loves it almost as much as he loves him. 

"Hey, Jude."

Jude turns his head and now Max can see almost half his face. He's smiling. "Yeah?"

"You're my truth." 

He laughs and it shakes Max's entire body. "You gonna tell the army that?"

"Yeah."

"What're you gonna say?"

"I haven't decided yet. What would you say?"

Jude sighs, tired and amused all at once. "Serious or joking?"

"Give me both." 

Jude shifts, moving over so that he's not squishing Max anymore. He misses it until Jude rolls onto his side to face him, curling close so they're nose to nose. Max can see through his eyes straight to his soul from here. 

"If I were going for laughs, I'd say I was a poof or a tranny. But you could tell `em your truth - that you're in love with a man, and that he's waiting for you to be done with this war bullshit." 

Max licks his lips. He tells himself that it's not a nervous gesture. "You're sure I'm in love with you?" he asks. 

Jude smiles with his eyes. "You sure you're not?"

"Are you sure you're not?" he parrots back, hoping for smartass. It comes out just shy of pathetic. 

"No," Jude says. He nuzzles his nose against Max's. It's almost better than the sex was. Almost. "I'm not sure at all. I'm fact, I fairly certain I am."

Max grins with his lips but he can taste regret on his tongue. "Our timing is shit." 

"Not if this gets you out," Jude says. His hands are traveling now. They're wandering over skin, exploring the planes and mountains of Max's torso. "Then it's bloody brilliant timing, I'd say."

They don't talk anymore after that. The quiet feels too good and so do Jude's hands. He wants to stay like this forever. But even as he wraps himself up in Jude's arms, he can hear a clock ticking down to the end of this life.

~*~*~

Jude goes walking with Lucy and his mind wanders. Less wanders and more races. To Max, who is at work. Max who left his bed this morning but came back to kiss him good morning.

She's scared. He's scared. Everyone's scared. The fear is new for Jude. 

In Liverpool there was pain. And despair. People were hopeless, but hopelessness has its own sort of comfort. Things don't change. They can't get better. There's a strange stability in that. 

Fear's not stable. It runs and bites and grows and changes and throws everything up in the air. 

Since yesterday everything's up in the air. His world. His life. His love. His sense of self. Yesterday came suddenly for Jude and some of it was so good he can barely think about it with feeling light, bright, warm. 

But he'd give up the good, the rightness of making love with Max, if he could take away the reason they'd come together. He'd go back to England and never see Max again if it would stop him from going to war.

Wanting and willing didn't change things for Lucy's Daniel. He doubts it will change it for his Max. He's working very hard to make them both believe it, though.

"Listen, no one and no gun is going to get Max. You know he's so twisted he'll bend his way out of this fix."

"I hope you're right." She looks at him with eyes that glitter like the water from tears she hasn't let fall. Her wet eyes beg him for reassurance, for something, anything for she can believe in.

"I am right. I love the bugger."

His truth. It pours from his lips like water from a faucet and right through Lucy. She looks at him, puzzled, and neither of them speak for what feels like forever. He breaks off a piece of wood that floats in the water near his feet and walks over to the wall to draw the sadness in lovely Lucy's face.

She and her brother have the same eyes. Hers are sad. Max's are lit. He sketches her face and some of the light he loves so much in Max seeps into her expression. He spends the day with her, distracting her and himself.

But the nights are about Max for Jude. Every night since he arrived at Princeton has been about Max for Jude. But it's more now. It's better. 

The night before Max has to report for his physical, there's a party. It's nothing new at the flat they share with Sadie, but this one feels different because Jude is different now. Max doesn't leave as much space between them when he swings an arm around Jude's shoulders, and Jude invites the contact. When Max leans over to talk into his ear over the noise of the party, he plants a small kiss on the skin on just beneath his earlobe before pulling away.

Neither of them leaves with a pretty bird. Instead they stick close to each other, and as the party winds down, Max wraps his arms around his back and pulls Jude to him and laughs.

"Dance with me, Jude," Max says, and what can he do but say yes?

They're both swaying, and the only people left in the apartment are their friends. But even if there weren't, they don't care. Jude takes Max's face in his hands and loses himself in eyes like the ocean. The sea's called to him before and the depths of Max's eyes call to him now, dragging him down for a kiss. 

He moves from Max's lips to his jaw to his neck. He can't lose this. Touching Max is better than weed, better than booze, better than art. It makes him electric and alive and he could spend his whole life learning the taste and texture of Max's skin and still not know enough.

Sadie slides up behind Jude as he's worrying his teeth on the shell of Max's ear. She smoothes her hands over his shoulders and reaches over his shoulder to gently stroke Max's hair away from his tightly closed eyes. Then she whispers in Jude's ear loud enough that Max can hear "I left some of my lotion by your bed," and is gone.

The words startle Jude, but Max groans and pulls Jude off. For a moment it's on the tip of his tongue to ask Max what's wrong, but then he's being kissed and backed into his bedroom. 

He's inside Max before he knows what's hit him. They fumble in the dark, all four of their hands slick and slippery with Sadie's lotion, but they manage. They manage and then he's drowning in hot, tight paradise and the gulf of Max's eyes.

"Christ," he breathes as he begins to slowly move his hips. "How can you be this beautiful?"

Max starts to laugh but the spasm of his muscles makes Jude sink deeper inside and his laughter catches on a gasp. 

"Jude," he sighs, his hands wandering, free to roam. "My Jude."

Jude lowers himself to rest on his right forearm as his rocks his hips. Max's right leg is hitched up over his left elbow and his left leg is braced on the mattress so that he can push back and he does and if this isn't nirvana, if this isn't an altered state, nothing is.

"Want you," Jude mumbles, his lips bumping Max's as he tries to kiss and fuck and talk all at once. "Love you."

"Sure?" Max asks, cheeky even now. Jude wants to laugh but all he can do is kiss him. Kiss him and live in him and the time that's slowly ticking away. He wants it to last forever, but it can't and doesn't. 

Coming almost hurts, it feels so good. And Max's voice in his ear is better than any song Sadie's ever sung. It's fantastic but Jude hates that it had to end.

He and Max curl around each other like kittens in a box. Jude likes to think that this is how it will always be. The possibility of losing Max isn't one he's willing to accept. 

"My turn next time," Max whispers. More secrets. More soft words in this bed. Jude wonders if the mattress will remember what it's hosted when they're gone. 

"Sounds fair."

"You'll like it," Max promises. 

"Did you?"

"No. I just came like a freight train because it was so awful." He pokes Jude in the side. It makes Jude jerk and protest. It crosses his mind to strike back, a game that could lead to his turn, but he's too tired to move.

They fall asleep like that, messy, sticky, and half on top of each other. And in the morning, Lucy's standing in the doorway in Max's black bathrobe. Her eyes are still sad, but her lips are curled sardonically. 

"So that's how it is?" she asks.

Jude's mouth dries up - he's in bed with her brother after all - but Max shuts his eyes and groans. It's suddenly not tense anymore. It's just kind of embarrassing. And Jude refuses to be embarrassed about this.

"Yeah, that's how it is," he manages, relieved that Max isn't pulling away.

"Well, speaking as a sister, he could do better." 

"Get out, Luce," Max mumbles, gesturing playfully with his middle finger. Jude laughs but Lucy's eyes don't twinkle.

"Max," Lucy says and her voice shakes. "I know you're happy right now, but you have to go today." She looks ready to cry and Jude feels Max's hand tighten in his hair. "To the army induction center."

If they weren't naked, if they didn't still have flaking come on them from the clean up they forgot to do the night before, it was entirely possible that that they would have pulled her right into bed with them, a shield of love around Max to protect him from reality. 

Her voice shatters and she runs from the room, sending the beads that make up Jude's door rustling behind her.

"I'm sure you'll be fine," Jude says, pushing Max's bangs off his forehead and planting a kiss there. "You'll both be fine."

Max, chatty Max, says nothing. Neither of them believes it.

~*~*~

"Any reason you shouldn't be in this man's army, son?"

"I'm cross-dressing homosexual pacifist with a spot on my lung." 

"As long as you don't have flat feet," Richards says, stamping a 1A on his papers. Fit for active duty.

Then he looks up at Max, standing in front of him, shaking in nothing but his boxers. He's been poked and prodded all day, but he can still feel Jude and the space he left inside him. It's been an odd feeling, but a reassuring one in the midst of all this green and khaki chaos.

"Son, can I give you a piece of advice?"

"Sir?"

"If you're really a queer, don't advertise it," he says, scribbling on Max's paperwork. "You'll live a lot longer in the jungle if the men on your squad don't know that."

"What?"

"If you're actually the deviant you claim to be," his tone says that he doesn't believe that for a second, "Telling the men in your unit won't get you a dishonorable discharge or a section 8. It's a good way to find yourself behind enemy lines with no backup.

The idea makes Max's blood run cold. Up until this moment, he's been clinging to the possibility that this isn't real, that it's not going to happen. But Richards' words feel like a noose being lowered around his neck. He's just waiting for the trap door to open.

Richards hands him back his papers and gives him a curt shake of the head. "Take that to processing."

He's got a month. It's not enough time. It's not enough time, damn it. He's got too much he wants to do, to say. He can't spend enough time with Jude and his sister and Sadie and Pru and Jojo in a month to hold him through something like going to Vietnam. 

"And you know the thing that pisses me off the most?" he demands that night, his head in Jude's lap.

"What?" Jude asks, carding his fingers through Max's hair. It makes Max want to purr.

"It's that I ate all those cotton balls and they didn't even take a damn X-ray." 

"You didn't really?" Jude asks, sounding horrified. "Max, you'll have a terrible time getting those out of your system."

"Don't I know it," Max sighs.

"You're not out of options," says the guy whose name still slips Max's mind even after months of knowing him. He's Jude's boss at Rat but he looks like he crawled out of a cave in the Himalayas with his thick beard and unruly hair. 

Max sighs and sags against Jude. "Yeah, like jail or Canada and they both suck. I mean, I could never come home. So what is it? It's a choice of an eight by six cell or an endless wasteland of frozen tundra."

"Montreal's cool."

Max pulls himself to sit up straighter, resting his head on Jude's shoulder instead so he could glare at his friend. "Man, they speak French." 

"So learn French," Pam replies. "Learn French or die." 

"I'd go with ya," Jude says. "If you're gonna make for Canada. I'd go with you." Max twists his head to look at Jude and watches as a flush fills his cheeks. "If you want, that is. The company."

Max opens his mouth. Shuts it. Then opens it again. Then closes it, but this time over Jude's lips because fuck. Fuck, that's a commitment right there. It's huge.

"So go," Pam says, unfazed by the sight, reminding Max of reason seventy-five billion why New York beats the shit out of Brookline. "Just go man. If you can't learn French, go to Toronto instead."

"Aren't you here illegally?" Lucy asks. She's been quiet most of the evening, working on a lone beer. But now her question cuts through the room like a knife. 

Jude breaks the kiss and blinks at her. "Yeah, I am. And?"

"And you won't make it across the border, man," says the guy, George maybe? Maybe his name's John. No. Not John. Something long with a D. Donald. No, he's got it. Desmond. "No passport. No ID." Desmond shakes his shaggy head. "You'll end up back in England."

Lucy's nodding and Max can feel the last of his hope evaporate. But he grins and wraps and arm around Jude's now-slumped shoulders. "Can't go without you, can I?"

"Ya can," Jude says, sliding out from under Max's arm. He rises and leaves the room. Max is up and on his heels in a flash, following Jude into his room, which is slowly but surely becoming their room.

"Jude-" he begins, but Jude cuts him off, turning on him with a face flushed with something Max doesn't understand.

"Ya should go, Max. You'll be safe in Canada."

"Yeah. But if I go to `Nam, you'll be here when I get back. If I go to Canada, I'll never come back. I won't get to see Lucy or my folks. I'd never see you again."

"Fine," Jude bites out. 

"Jude." Max moves to him, grabbing his shoulders. But Jude won't look at him. Or can't. "That can't be what you want."

Jude shrugged him off, freeing his arms to grab Max's face in his hands. They're rough from months of drawing and years of shipyard work, and they hold Max so that he can't look anywhere but into Jude's eyes. "I'd rather never see you again because you're stuck in Ontario than because there's not enough left of you to send home. Christ, Max, they're dying over there." 

And then Jude's kissing him, trying to pull part of him out. He makes a groaning, desperate sound in the back of his throat that makes Max hot and breaks his heart all at once. 

When they break for air, they stand pressed chest to chest, nose to nose. His forehead rests against Jude's. He doesn't want to lose this. He won't allow himself to lose it.

"I can't- I can't run now." And that's the truth. Another of his truths. He's been dealing with a lot of them lately. Too many of them all at once. "I want to, but none of the options are good."

"So ya take the one that keeps you alive."

"This war could take fifty years, Jude! It could take a hundred! We could be dead before the US finally gets the fuck out of Southeast Asia. Even if they do, I still couldn't come back. I need to have the hope that I can get back to you, to Lucy, to my family, my friends, my life. I guess ... a tour in Nam's a lot shorter than a lifetime." 

And that's true too. It's scary. But it's actually kind of good. He knows what he's going to do now. Decision made. In a way, it makes it easier to bear ... everything - from his own fear to the pain in Jude's face to his sister's terror at losing another man she loves to the war to the pleasure of Jude's hands on him.

"Tell me you'll be here," Max whispers. "When I come back from that fucking place. Tell me you'll be here. That you'll wait for me." 

"Where the bloody hell else would I be?" Jude demands. 

Then Jude is kissing him again. Angry kisses that almost hurt. His fingers will leave bruises on Max's hips and he sags into it. He's never had anyone care this much about him before. Not ever. Not like this.

It's a completely different kind of sex than he's ever had before. It's got a vibrating edge of violence behind it. It's furious and it hurts. It hurts so fucking good and Jude leaves pieces of himself behind as he makes love - bloody pieces that he digs into Max with fingernails and teeth and thighs and skin. 

"Stupid," Jude half sobs as he starts to come. "You stupid blighter. Max, Jesus."

Max for once doesn't have anything to say. He just squeezes Jude to him with his arms and his legs and takes it. Because it's pain but it's pleasure, and maybe that's what love is too - pleasure that's agony.

Jude's quiet for a long time afterwards. Max is pretty sure that he's fallen asleep, but he finally moves, sitting up and rubbing his face.

"Could use a shower," he says. "And a fag."

"You've got one of those," Max teases.

Jude smiles at him, finally. Then he shakes his head. "Not that kind of fag, you twat. A cigarette."

There's a pack in his pants which are somewhere over there ... somewhere. Max doesn't want to go find them. Jude hangs over the side of the bed briefly and grabs one from the mess of his clothes and comes up with two cigarettes and a lighter. He hands one to Max but only lights his own. 

Max taps the butt against his lips as he studies Jude's face. The lights have gone dim in the rest of the apartment and people have settled into their own rooms or gone home. The light from the lamp in the room casts dark shadows on his lover's face.

"You okay, man?"

"No," Jude mumbles around his cigarette. "I'm not bloody well okay. This isn't okay. "

"I know."

Jude reaches out and strokes a hand down Max's body, starting at his neck and trailing down over his chest and over his stomach. Curving up his hip and then Jude lifts his fingers up and pulls them across him from shoulder to shoulder. Drawing something. It fees like a J.

"I love you like this," he says. "Just like this. Lovely and limp, all silver and gold."

Max's eyes narrow. "Did you get high without me? Because that's a form of cheating, you know."

"No," Jude sighs. "All this'd be easier if we were, wouldn't it?" 

He rolls out of bed and Max moves to sit up. Jude holds up a hand as he cross the room naked to the dresser. 

"Do you still want a shower?"

"Later," Jude says. He grabs one of his pads and fishes a piece of charcoal out of a drawer.

"I'm going to get crusty."

"Tough."

He comes back and settles himself back on the bed, his feet resting between Max's spread legs, his knees tucked up to give his paper a place to rest.

"You're gonna draw me?"

"If you can stop moving that long," Jude replies, his hand already ghosting over the page. 

And Max is content to watch Jude watch him. He even makes himself stop tapping the unlit cigarette until he just sort of melts into the bed. He drifts and blinks awake and finds that Jude hasn't moved. But he's not smoking anymore, so time has passed.

"How's it coming?"

"Not bad."

"How's it look?"

"Beautiful," Jude says, but he's not looking at his work. He's looking at Max. 

Max sits up. "Can I see?"

Jude flips the pad over so that the drawing is face down. "Not yet. It's not finished." He taps Max's leg with his foot. "Come on. You're a right mess."

"And whose fault is that?"

The shower's a tight fit for two people but they manage. Jude actually washes his hair, which is kind of strange. He hasn't had someone else wash his hair for him since before he started elementary school, but it feels good and he sort of sighs and leans into Jude.

It's so easy to take this for granted, hot running water, affection, tenderness, safety. He's going to lose it all soon. He tightens his soapy arms around Jude, and the heat of Jude's body and the heat of the water push away some of the cold trepidation that's set up shop in his veins.

"We're not going to fight anymore, are we?" Max asks, blinking soapy water out of his eyes. "I don't want to fight with you, Jude. There's not enough time for that."

Jude shakes his head, flinging drops of water everywhere. "If you don't want to fight, then I don't think we should talk about it anymore."

Max nods and Jude's hands aren't so much washing his hair as much as he's using his hair as an anchor. It's holding them together.

"I can do that. Just stay with me."

"Always."

And that's that for a while. Life sorta kinda goes back to almost-normal for a couple days, until the morning Prudence locks herself in the closet. 

Max loves her to pieces but he just doesn't get her some times. If he can embrace what he wants, why can't she? Okay, Sadie probably wouldn't roll with it, but still she'd be cool. They're all cool. 

When she finally emerges, blushing and chagrined, it's Lucy's idea to leave the house.

The protest is Lucy's idea too. She found it She suggested it. She led them to it. 

There's a moment of silent tension, where that thing they promised not to talk about, simmers between them, but Jude sighs and goes for Max's sake and for Lucy's and for Pru's, and Max appreciates it. 

In a way, it's his token of understanding and acceptance of Max's decision. But he still won't talk about it. Which Max gets, really. Lucy's been doing more than enough talking for everyone. 

She's scared and he gets that. He hugs her to him as they listen to some white radical with a Spanish name preach about American imperialism. Max agrees with him, one hundred percent. The Vietnamese don't want them there and he doesn't want to go. Being reminded of it doesn't help matters. 

But he doesn't say anything about that. He just turns to Lucy and shakes her out of her melancholy. She looks up him, and suddenly she's seven again, looking to him for all the answers and ready to believe anything he says. 

"Hey, Luce! Luce, come on, man, stop worrying about it." He cups the side of her cheek and shakes her shoulders. "Nothing's going to happen to me. I could go in the Army and not get shipped anywhere. Play a lot of cards, learn how to box. Come on, look at this." He wraps his arm around her shoulders and she leans in against him. "It's happening everywhere. Maybe LBJ will have a change of heart and call the whole thing off. Huh?" He kisses the side of her head and she wraps her arms around his waist.

"I'm hope so."

"Hey, trust me. I'll be fine."

But she snuggles her head against his and he knows that she's seeing Daniel. She's remembering a folded flag and a pair of dog tags with no owner. At eighteen, his sister is haunted. He holds her tighter, but he doesn't think that will exorcise her ghost. 

He looks over her head at Jude. He's looking at them both with his hands shoved in his pockets. Max doesn't know exactly what he sees, but he offers him a smile and Jude smiles back. 

It makes him feel brave.

~*~*~

Jude has seventeen different drawings of Max on the walls of his room. Those are just the ones that he can stand to look at. All of them are decent. None of them are right.

Max has taken to wearing Sadie's clothes. It brings out softer things in the hard angles of Max's face. He likes it. But when Jude tries to capture that dichotomy, it just comes off messy and tawdry.

He's tempted to ask Max to be still, but that'd defeat the whole point, wouldn't it? Max is kinetic. That's part of his beauty. 

He can't help but feel like there's no way to make this work, but he needs to. He needs to have a record for when he doesn't have the real Max to look at, to touch.

Max lands with a thump in front of him on the couch, Sadie's blue shirt hanging off him and open. He's got a roach held between his thumb and forefinger and his limbs are spaghetti loose. 

"Party tonight," Max says. "Sadie's new manager, agent, whatever, he's got this blow out thing with that hippy guru guy, Dr. Robert." 

"Sounds interesting," Jude says, erasing a bit of Max's nose and reshaping it a bit straighter now that he's got his subject up close.

Max slowly releases the grey-green smoke from his lungs. When the last of it leaves his lips he turns to Jude and asks, "You wanna go?"

Jude shrugs. "Sure. Why not?"

Max's blue eyes study him and Jude wonders if he shouldn't start working with colors. Black and white isn't doing it, but he doesn't think anyone makes the blue of Max's eyes or the yellow-brown-white of Max's hair. 

"Well, we could stay in and fuck on the kitchen table," Max offers. His smile is crooked and wide.

Jude starts and then laughs, his mind flashing to the complete and glorious mess that would make. He can already hear Max weaving a bullshit-laden explanation for why the table's broken. 

He glances around. The flat's empty. Sadie's got another of her meetings and Prudence skived off about a week ago in the crowd at the protest. It's just the two of them.

"Or we could do that now before everyone gets back, and go the party after."

Max waves his hand at Jude, grinning. "I love the way you think." Then he pushes himself up and heads into the kitchen, and Jude wonders when he went mental. Probably about ten minutes after meeting Max, he reckons. 

The table doesn't break, but they're still trying to tidy up when Sadie and Jojo breeze in. They take in the pair of them, the chaos of broken plates and pots and pans in disarray. Jojo chokes back a laugh and Sadie folds her arms over her breasts. 

"You boys better not think I'm helping you clean that up."

"Never dreamed you would." Max quips and she shakes her head. But Jude sees her smile.

"You better hurry. Party starts in a few hours." She stops and adds over her shoulder, "You're washing my shirt, Max."

The party is unlike anything Jude's ever seen. It's a dark explosion of swirling color filled with colorful people and Max is practically vibrating with excitement. This is what Max had been looking for when they came out to New York. 

Jude's a little less sure about what it all is, what it means, but he falls into the rhythm easily. And he's pretty sure there was something funny in the pink punch. 

And by the time he's sure that yes, there's definitely something strange going on, the world's a completely different place. Dr. Robert's words echo around in Jude's head and Max's swaying to a rhythm that Jude can't hear but he can feel it, pulsing from Max into him like a living thing.

He turns so that he can see Max, and he's awash in colors and light. It's like someone threw buckets of paint at him and then lit him from within. 

They land on an inflatable bed made of clear plastic and Jude wonders how they got there. He wonders what they're doing. He feels like time's slowed and stretched and wrapped itself back around them like a bubble. They've got forever in here.

"I can see your soul," Max laughs, skimming his fingers millimeters over the skin of Jude's face. 

He's close enough that Jude can feel his heat but not close enough to touch. He hovers over Jude's eyes, his nose, his cheeks. When he comes to Jude's lips, he lowers his hand so that his fingertips can trace their shape. 

"You're blue and red and green. A sea of green." 

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Then Max cracks up and it's like he's made of stars. He's a bloody galaxy all wrapped up in one person. Little glittering pieces that make up something wholly beyond comprehension. 

Jude's falling through space but that's all right. He's moving through Max's stars.

Someone eventually pulls them out of their bubble of green stars and blue love. Jude thinks it's Lucy but it could be Sadie or maybe Jojo. He has no idea. 

Time is still twisted in on itself as Max tugs him onto a bus that looks like a Van Gogh painting threw up all over it. But the colors on it are dancing and so are the people. There's acid on sugar cubes and there's weed, and the bumping of the bus feels like an earthquake in Jude's bones until finally the bus stops and they roll out and into high grass. 

It takes less than minutes for them to get stranded in upstate New York. Max is edgy and coming off whatever it is that he took, rubbing his arm and looking around.

It's mostly Lucy who talks him down. She makes a perfect flower child, shining and serene like a moon goddess who got a free pass for daylight hours. 

I am he as you are he as you are me and we're all together. And in that big empty field, they're anyone and everyone. Max's fingers tangle in his, and Jude follows Lucy's yellow dress and Max's red shirt through a field of cows with faces for spots down and through the green grass to a circus, of all things.

Jude hasn't seen a circus since he was about 10. They couldn't afford it most years, but for his tenth birthday his mum saved up special. The show arrived two months after his birthday had come and gone, but he'd still felt so special to go. He loved the acrobats, tiny Chinese men who bent themselves like paper clips. The trapeze artists had made his heart stop as they soared through the air, trusting their partners to catch them. 

Mr. Kite's Show is everything and nothing like that. Jude doesn't understand most of what he sees, but Max stands next to him with his arm wrapped around his shoulders and he points out things that catch his eye. His excitement is childlike and completely enthralled. 

His joy is almost tangible. Max points out Prudence with an excited arm and oohs and ahs at the men on stilts and is so contagiously happy it makes Jude feel ten years old again. He laughs at the blue people and he's mesmerized by the acrobatics, but this time it's not the men on the flying trapeze that makes his heart stop, it's Max's smile.

After it's over, after Prudence takes her bow with the rest of the show, they explode out into the night like a bullet from a gun. The sky is cloudless. The stars are brighter than spotlights.

Jude feels like he's falling into that forever. Then Max's arms wrap around his stomach and they hit the ground with a thump and instead of falling, they're floating.

"Hey, Jude," Max breathes, his breath hot.

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

The words make Jude's stomach flip and his chest fade to warmth. "Do you now?"

"Yeah. So much I can taste it." He tips Jude's face towards him and kisses him. It's lazy and languid like syrup. Then he pulls back. "Can you taste it, Jude?" 

Max tastes like sugar and beer and marijuana and just Max. Jude drags Max back down to him, looking for what love taste like. Max's lips try to push into a smile even as he does so, and Jude deices that yes, he can taste it. 

"Can you?" Jude asks. They're lying together in the grass, heads together, soaking in the dark.

Max's face splits with happiness. "Oh yeah."

"Good. Because I do."

"I do, too." 

Max's arm is covered in fabric and Jude pushes his sleeve up. He wants to touch. He opens his shirt so he can feel the skin, the hair that sprinkles its way down. Max's own hand is tucked neatly under the fabric of Jude's shirt, circling his navel over and over with the pad of his finger.

"Let's get married," Max laughs. "I'll wear the dress." 

"Who'd marry us?" Jude asks. 

He can't imagine that. He can imagine loving Max for the rest of his life perfectly, but he can't fathom that. He traces lines onto the skin above Max's heart as they lie together. 

"I know. But I'll wear the dress anyway."

"Sounds like a plan." 

He doesn't need to see Max to know he's rolling his eyes. "Not right this second."

"You don't have the dress," Jude points out with a smile.

"Later," Max says, and there's a waver in his voice. 

It trembles and wavers like waves in the lake. They don't really have much later. The bubble of time around them is getting thinner and thinner every minute. Soon time will return to its normal pace and they'll be hurtling back towards their own personal D-Day.

"Yeah," Jude whispers as he brings his mouth back to Max's. "Later." His tongue glides over Max's lips before dipping inside and it's more a reassurance of promises. `I'm here. I'll stay with you. I love you.' He wishes that he could add protection to that promise.

For now they're safe, together, in the grass and the sky. They're cushioned by each other and the family they've built. 

As the drugs fade, Jude knows he hasn't convinced himself of that fact. But as he lounges in the sun with Max and Lucy and Jojo and Sadie and Prudence, he thinks that maybe wishing for it's enough.

~*~*~

When he was still working, Max left the radio playing the local rock and roll station in his taxi whenever he was in it. It's not that he likes the music that much, though he does, it's that he didn't like to be alone with his thoughts. And when he didn't have a customer in the back, the quiet got dangerous. 

When he's done with his two-week notice, the one he turned in as soon as he was spit out of the induction center, he keeps the radio on in the apartment all the time. It's a necessity, because when no one's talking, his mind starts to drift and that's nothing but trouble. He doesn't want to borrow this particular trouble, but it its right there, offering itself to him.

It's like trying not to think about the color blue once someone has specifically told you not to. It's all you want to do. Only in Max's case, it's less blue and more a khaki green and a dirt brown.

He doesn't want to think about the fucking war. He doesn't want to think about Asia. He doesn't want to think about Lucy's boyfriend - dead, dead, so very fucking dead. 

Max wants what he's trying not to think of as his last days to be filled with good thoughts. He wants to think about the way Lucy's settling into New York. He wants to think about Sadie's new opportunity to be the star they all knew she was. 

And he wants to do good things. He wants to hear the latest song Jojo's written. He wants to read the latest letter from Prudence out on the road. He wants to look through Jude's art and watch him work.

Mostly he just wants to drown himself in Jude. It shocks Max how selfish he's become, monopolizing Jude's time. But every time they make love, it's like he's eating his last meal. He pulls Jude into his mouth and his body and he's sucked into Jude's and they try to crawl into each other, but it's never close enough. 

Max talks. Before. After. During. None of the things he tells Jude are important for any reason except that they're the little pieces of information that make up who he is. He talks about his first car, a busted up Ford from `47 with a dying engine. He tells Jude about his first girlfriend, about the summer he interned for his dad's law firm and how mind-numbingly bored he was. He whispers about how his mother's disappointment in him hurts because even though his folks are total squares, he loves her, and how she's the reason he never tried anything with a man before Jude. 

And Jude soaks it up. He fills Max's silence with stories of his own. Most of them about his mother. What she looks like. How she cooks. The way she was the sort of woman who would laugh rather than scold when he came in from play covered in dirt or mud. He talks about England, the grey days and the rain. He tells about the Titanic and how it's one of Liverpool's biggest claims to fame, right after the Beatles, and how the fact that it wrecked and killed all those people is sort of fitting considering what Liverpool is like. 

He even talks about his schooling, how he didn't finish what made for high school in England and went to work in the shipyard at fifteen without having his O-levels. How different their adolescences were should have made their worlds seem even farther away, but then Max was a drop-out too. He'd just waited a little longer to do it. 

Sometimes Jude sings, under his breath. He does it without really thinking about it, the music pouring out from his brain through his lips when he's not paying attention. He mouths along to "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "God Only Knows" and he hums "House of the Rising Sun" and "My Girl" and he sings "Can't Help Falling in Love" and "All My Loving" to himself as he draws. 

Jude's voice replaces the Beatles and Dylan and Elvis in Max's head. The sound wraps around Max's brain like a blanket, warm and comforting. When Jude's singing, the end doesn't seem so close.

But it's almost on top of him. Anxiety's become a living thing, crawling and squirming under his skin. 

T-minus three days and counting, and the nervous energy sort of explodes out of Max. And because Lucy isn't there, he throws it at the other person who loves him unconditionally instead. 

"I'm not going to keep quiet about this anymore, Jude," he snaps. His tone is angry even though Jude hasn't said anything in the last hour or so since he started working on new piece.

"About what?"

"Leaving."

Jude doesn't look up from his drawing. "So talk."

"I want you to listen to me, damn it."

Jude sighs and looks up but says nothing. He just stares, expectantly. Waiting. Listening. Of course he is. 

"I'm-" Max rubs his face and sighs. "Fuck, man."

Jude's eyebrow quirks in a silent question. `What are you on about, mate?' the eyebrow asks.

"I leave Monday."

"I know."

"You know. You fucking know. Jesus, Jude, don't you care? I'm shipping out to the jungle in three days and all you can say is, `I know'?" Max demands.

Jude rubs his brow with the back of one charcoal smudged hand. It leaves a black streak above his eye. "What would ya like me to say? Don't go? I said that already. I'll miss ya? Of course I will. I love you? If you haven't figured that out by now, you've not been paying attention. What do you want me to do, Max?"

"Something. Anything. Just stop being so fucking quiet all the time. Christ, it's driving me crazy."

"I'm not doin' this."

"This?" 

"Fighting," Jude says. 

He lets his charcoal drop from his hand and reaches out for Max. Max takes a step back and wraps his arms tightly around himself. Jude's eyes flash and he rises from his chair.

"I'm not fighting with you. We've got no time, Max." 

Jude has to lunge to catch Max and when he does they crash to the floor. Pain radiates up Max's back. He hopes something's broken. Like his spine. Maybe he'll end up paralyzed or something. Then he'll have to stay. But he can feel Jude on his legs and that hope is gone.

"Look," Jude says, breathless from the fall. "I know you're scared."

Max turns his head to the side, staring at the space underneath the fridge. There are clumps of dust and bits of paper all in ugly shadow. "I'm not scared." 

"Yeah, you are. I'm scared, too. It's all right, Max. It'll be all right." 

"No, it's not," Max chokes. His eyes sting and it's not from the pain of the fall. "Nothing's all right. God, Jude, you were right. Nothing's okay."

"You are," Jude murmurs, pushing himself up on his elbows. It's so similar to when they make love. But there's nothing sexual in this moment. "You're okay. I've got you. "

"And when you're not with me? When Lucy's not with me?" Max can feel hot tears fighting for release. He hates how close they are to pushing free. It makes him feel weak and foolish.

But Jude shakes his head. "I'll always be with you. You'll take a bit of me with ya when you leave, wont ya? You'll bring Lucy and your littlest sister and your mum and dad. Sadie and Prudence and Jojo and Des and Pam, the whole bloody Village." He taps on Max's forehead with blunt fingers. "We're all in here. We're not going to leave you, not unless you make us." 

"I want you to be right. Oh God, Jude," Max whispers. He feels himself breaking, coming to pieces and scattering all over the floor. He ducks his head and buries his face against Jude's shoulder as he sobs, a month of fear for a year in hell tearing through his mind.

Jude surprises him. He rolls them over so that instead of pulling himself up off the floor, Max is spiraled on top of Jude. Max doesn't struggle. He's shaking in the circle of Jude's embrace and crying like he hasn't since he was a child.

"I'm not this guy, Jude," he manages on a sob. 

"I know," Jude soothes. His right arm is tight around Max's back and his left is carding through his hair. "I know, love."

"I'm not this pathetic fucking guy. I'm not a fucking coward." 

"You're not pathetic," Jude snaps. His voice is so sharp that Max can actually feel his chest rise with the exhalation. "And you're no coward. A coward would've run. A coward would run now. You're anything but a coward, Max." He smiles and Max can't see it with his eyes locked on the skin of Jude's neck, but he can hear it in his voice. "You're an idiot, but you're no coward." 

"I am scared," Max mumbles. Jude's skin is salty wet with his tears. It's too much to ask of one person, to hold you together. But Jude doesn't seem to mind.

"I know. God, I know. If I'm bloody terrified, how bad's it for you?"

The question's rhetorical but Max understands that Jude understands. Because Jude gets him. Always has. Hopefully, he always will. And all of it boils down to one simple fear that's been driving everything in Max's life since he got the draft letter

"I don't wanna die."

Max was never religious. He was too smart for it. So he doesn't have the comfort of the idea of heaven like some people. He kinda believes in reincarnation and limbo and ghosts, but he wants to be sure of something, anything, because he's got this gnawing fear that there's just nothing.

And if he's going to die, he'll just die on the other side of the world and that'll be it. No second chances. No do-overs. No more beer or sex or laughter or music or pain or sadness or shitty days where you're just bored as hell. No afterlife where he can cool his heels `til his family and friends meet up with him. Just nothing. 

He hasn't lived enough to be ready to face nothing yet. He'll never be ready, but definitely not now. 

"You won't."

The certainty in Jude's voice makes Max lift his head. There's a smile on Jude's face but there's tears running down the side of his face into his hair.

"You can't know that."

Jude's smile becomes a grin that's ruined by the tears in his eyes. "Sure I can."

Max snorts, loving Jude all the more for giving him something to laugh at, to smile at, right now. "You're no psychic and you're sure as shit not God."

"I don't need to be. I just know you. You'll be fine. Ya always are. It's what makes you you."

"Bullets don't care who I am."

"Neither do bombs, I'd imagine, but I do. You will be. I need you to be fine so you will be."

"It's that simple."

"Yeah. It is. Want to get up now, by any chance?"

Max sighs and rests his cheek on the fabric that covers Jude's shoulder. "No."

"All right." 

It's a tenuous sort of peace that settles over Max but after the strain of the last several days it's like slipping into a hot bath. Some of the tightness in the base of his skull fades and he actually dozes for a while. At least, until Jude drags him up.

"Wha?"

"You've got to get up, Max. You'll catch cold."

Max groans at that but he doesn't shrug off Jude's touch. 

Doing nothing's never been that exhausting before but Max is empty and he sleeps away most of his last free Friday. He stirs when Jude crawls in next to him a few hours before dawn, but for the most part, his world is dark and warm.

Saturday, Sadie throws him a party. She kicks him out of the apartment that morning at the crack of noon even though he offers to help.

"You can't set up your own going away party, sugar. Go out. Soak up the city. It's a beautiful day." She plants a kiss on his cheek before slamming the door in his face. He's on the wrong side of it without his keys when the lock clicks. 

"Can I have my wallet at least? I'm hungry."

Max takes a step back and watches in dismay as ten dollars in ones is shoved under the door. But it doesn't open. With a shrug and a sigh, he shoves the bills in his pocket and trudges down the half a dozen flights of stairs to the street below.

The sunlight makes him squint for a moment, but he adjusts quickly. It's a cool enough day. Nice. Beautiful even. He waves and smiles and stops to talk to people he knows, which is mostly everybody. He's always been a friendly kind of guy. 

He's just never realized how much before. But today everyone has something to say. 

Most of them wish him good luck and ask him about the party. He laughs with them, hugs them, and tells them to be there at eight. They tell him they're bringing booze or grass or `shrooms or food, and they tell him they'll see him later. 

About half of them have something nasty to say about LBJ in particular and the army in general that just makes him feel nauseous. To those people he just smiles and nods. Three of them say they're gonna pray for him, which is a little weird to hear from some of them. 

And Gary, the homeless guy who lives behind the dumpster out the back of Café Huh?, actually blesses him in some sort of weird gobbledygook language with what he claimed to be a protection charm. He places his hands on Max's forehead and spits on the ground.

Max saves that because he thinks that Jude'll laugh. He knows Sadie will. And it's a good story either way.

He ends up in Café Huh? with Jojo. It's mostly empty and Jojo's just tuning up on stage. His guitar sounds like it's moaning and Max sprawls in one of the booths to listen. He stares at the ceiling of the club and listens.

"They got music over there, Jojo?" Max asks when the music stops for a moment. 

"Yeah. Most of it you make yourself, though. Depends on where you are."

"So maybe I'll get lucky."

"You never know, brother. I hope you're surrounded by music." 

"None of it'll be as good as yours and Sadie's," Max sighs.

"You never know," Jojo replies. "Don't stress, man. Life'll come as it comes."

"That's the truth." Max pulls himself up. "You know what time it is?"

Jojo glances at his wrist. "Almost seven. What're you waiting for?"

"The party. Sadie's locked me out. You'd think she was repainting the whole apartment or something."

Jojo's laugh is a bark that cuts through the empty club. He shakes his head and grins. "That sounds like her."

"Yeah, well, it better be awesome."

"You haven't had a good day?" Jojo asks, sliding into the booth next to Max. He puts his guitar on the table in front of them and Max reaches out to pluck a string as he contemplates the question.

"I guess." Max muses, strumming the strings. The sound is a mellow ripple. It makes him smile, just like Gary's bizarre blessing did. "Yeah. It's been a good day."

A smile flashes white in Jojo's dark face. "That's all anybody can hope for. More than most folks get." 

"Yeah. How about you?"

Jojo puts his hand on Max's shoulder and squeezes. "Always a good day chillin' with you, brother. You'll be missed." 

Max doesn't smile. He nods and picks a metal string on Jojo's red cherry of a guitar. It hums and so does Max. He's singing to himself by the time they finally migrate up to the party, one of Jude's old stand-bys. It doesn't sound as good when he sings it, but it makes him feel better and he's grinning like a fool when the door opens on his "surprise" party.

Compared to the black and white of the hallway, the apartment is exploding with color. Jude's work, he has no doubt. Sheets of what was once white banner paper are stuck on the walls and the ceiling, covered in paint of all colors. 

There's a banner across the living room/whatever room proclaiming "We love you, Max!" in what he recognizes as Lucy's script, but blown up ten times and done in red paint. 

He does not cry. It's just all the dust the gang stirred up getting this ready. It plays hell on his allergies. That's it.

The place is packed with people. It's like everyone he's ever met in the last two years has come up out of the woodwork to be here for his big send off. There's a collective explosion of noise as he enters and he's hit square in the chest by 100 pounds of speeding sister. 

His arms go around Lucy in a reflex, and she feels great in his arms. He picks her up off the ground and spins her around like he used to when she was little, though less wildly because there are people everywhere, and when he sets her back down she's laughing up at him. 

"Great party, Luce," he shouts to her, over the music. "It looks amazing."

"I just bought the paint and helped a little," she calls back, hugging him again. "Sadie got everyone together and Jude did all the work."

"You seen them?" he asks over the music. She nods but doesn't try to talk over the sound of the Jefferson Airplane record blaring out "White Rabbit." Instead she grabs his hand and tugs him through the apartment. 

They find Sadie first. She's in a quieter corner of the living room, talking to a woman he doesn't recognize at first. Then Sadie points and she turns and he finds himself with two arms full of Prudence. She's even smaller than Lucy in stature and lifting her into a full body embrace is nothing. She's wrapped around him like an affectionate lesbian octopus, and he squeezes her back tightly.

"You came," Max chokes, shocked and buzzing. They're all together again. He hadn't thought they ever would be.

"Of course," she says directly into his ear. "I couldn't miss seeing you off, could I?"

Max pulls back and tilts his head ponderously. "I don't know, could you?"

She unwraps one arm from around his neck to smack him gently upside the head. "No, stupid. I couldn't. Sadie called me last week. I just couldn't get in `til this afternoon. Rita's car broke down."

She finally climbs down and they talk. He asks about her girlfriend. She asks about his boyfriend. It's a queer bonding and a weird sort of solidarity that he's never actually felt before ever, and it's kind of nice. He wishes it hadn't taken him so long to find but he doesn't say so. He just tweaks her nose and drags her back to hang with Sadie.

Jojo is wrapped around her, and with Prudence under one arm and his sister under the other, there's only one thing missing that would make this night perfect.

"Hey, where's Jude?"

He feels Lucy shrug against his arm. Sadie leans over to speak into his ear, just like she had to Jude at the party a month ago. He wonders if her words will be as incendiary this time. 

"I think he's behind you."

Max turns and looks through the crowd for Jude. He's in the kitchen talking with Desmond. Their heads are together and they're talking about something, but Max's too far away to hear. But Jude looks up briefly and meets his gaze for a second that stretches. He nods once, a silent `I see you', then turns back to whatever Desmond's saying, and Max lets Lucy tug him back into the conversation. 

Jude seems to disappear after that. He's around somewhere. Max gets glimpses of him throughout the night, but Prudence suggests a rather complicated drinking game and after the third time he's punished for failing to understand her rules with a shot, he loses track of him completely.

Lucy starts crying on her fifth shot. It's awful, but she's laughing too, the kind of psychotic laugh-crying that you only do when you couple stress with being good and wasted, and Max quits while they're ahead. He's only sorta drunk, not enough that he's going to have a hangover, and he knows the last thing Lucy wants to do is embarrass herself in front of their friends. 

They end up on the fire escape, staring up at the New York night. No stars, just clouds drifting grey-orange across a navy sky. She leans heavily against him and holds him so tight he can barely breathe.

"I'll miss you like hell, Luce," he says when she finally calms. "You're one of my favorite people." 

She sighs heavily and her hands clench in the fabric of his shirt. "I'm so afraid for you, Max."

"Me, too."

"Then don't go," Lucy pleads. "Go to Canada."

Max shakes his head and pulls away from her so he can see her face. "No, Luce. I'm scared for you, too."

Her eyes get all big in her face and she looks like a Looney Tunes character. He shakes away the thought and makes a promise to himself to get some coffee after all this. He needs to sober the hell up. 

"Why? I'm staying here. I'm not the one going off to fight on the other side of the world."

"Yeah, you're here. You're here and there's a lot of stupid shit going on here. I remember being 18, Luce. It wasn't that long ago, and I seem to remember that stupid comes with the territory." He smiles at her. "Don't be stupid over me." 

Lucy won't meet his eyes and Max knows he's not going to get any reassurance from her. She's always been too smart and too stubborn for her own good. He figures it runs in the family. 

So he kisses her on the forehead and sighs. She rubs her neck as she stares down into the alley and when she looks up, she's holding something in her hand. It glints in the light from the party, and when she opens her hand, it hangs from her fingers.

Max blanches. "No, Lucy, I can't-"

"Shut up, Max," she says, reaching out to him. She unhooks the latch and fastens her necklace around his neck.

It's girly. It's ridiculous. The heart sits above his clavicle. He can't, because for God's sake Daniel gave it to her. As far as he knows, that's all she's got left of him. 

"I can't take this."

She smiles at him with shining eyes. "You can and you will." She taps it. "I'll get you a longer chain before you leave."

"Luce-"

"You're keeping it. I want you to keep it. If you've got that big a problem with it, call it a loan. When you get home, you'll give it back."

Max's throat aches and he swallows hard around the burn in his throat. He pulls her to him and rests his forehead against the crown of her head. He can smell her shampoo and feel the softness of her hair, and he squeezes her even tighter because he loves her. He loves her so much. He wishes that he had the words. But instead he just holds her. 

"I'm coming back," he whispers. "I am."

"Yes," she replies, her arms wound tightly around him. "You are." 

Max doesn't feel much like partying after that. But they can't sit out on the fire escape, and there are people he wants to say good-bye to, so eventually they climb back into the apartment and rejoin the festivities. This time though, he doesn't drink with Prudence. 

The party finally winds down around 4 a.m. Most of the guests have either passed out in the living room or left for more happening pastures. Prudence and Rita are staying with Lucy and they leave the party about twenty minutes before Jojo and Sadie make for Sadie's room. 

Max is already asleep by then. Mostly. He drifts in and out on the couch, one leg up on the arm, one planted firmly on the floor, his right arm slung over his face. But he wakes up early Sunday afternoon in his and Jude's bed, with Jude's warm body behind him. 

Jude's asleep but when Max rolls over to face him, his movement shakes him awake. He blinks tiredly and smiles. It's a gorgeous smile and Max wants to taste it. He anchors himself with a hand on Jude's cheek and kisses his way into him.

The room's lit by sunlight and Jude slides over him easily. His weight is warm and familiar and Max is going to miss this the most. Jude, all around him, seeping into all that he is. 

Jude breaks the kiss and smiles down at him. "Morning."

"Good morning."

"Ya sleep all right?"

"Yeah," Max chuckles, because Jude is mostly naked, and they're talking about sleeping. "Thanks."

"Lucy helped."

"You know, when you're on top of me, I really don't want to think about my sister."

Jude tilts his head and the corners of his mouth quirks. "Oh? What'd you like to talk about then?"

Max pulls his knees up. It tents the sheet covering them and cages Jude's hips. He's wearing boxer shorts and Max can't keep himself from thinking about all the different ways he can get them and his own underwear off. "You."

Jude lowers his face so that all Max can see is his eyes. They're dark, the brown fading into black pupils. "What about me?"

"I want you," Max says, pushing up with his hips. It makes his breath quicken and his nerves buzz. "I want you inside me. I want to feel you inside me for days, Jude. Months. Bruised and used. My truth that nobody else'll know." 

"Your mouth," Jude chokes. "A fuckin' gob you've got on you. Christ almighty, Max."

Max lifts his hips again but Jude's hands are on him, pulling off what little clothes he's got on from the night before. He sits up to pull the boxers off Jude and then he pulls him back down. The sheet over them is like a shield. The world can't touch them under the covers.

"Jesus," Max breathes, his legs tangling themselves tightly around Jude. Too long. It's all taking too long. "Fuck, Jude, stop messing around and fuck me."

Jude nuzzles the side of his neck and Max digs his fingers into Jude's shoulders. He gasps as Jude gives him exactly what he wants, deep and hard enough to shake his teeth in his head. His neck snaps back so he's suddenly staring at the headboard and he's electric.

Jude's not moving. It's the sort of thing that Max really would have appreciated their first go, but he's not exactly untouched, and static isn't what he wants. He wants Jude to leave a hole in him, like the one he's going to leave in Max's heart. 

He pulls Jude out of the groove where his shoulder and neck meet by the hair and stares into his face for all of half a breath before he's kissing him. His tongue fucks Jude's mouth the way he wants Jude to fuck his body, hard and fast and desperate. When he breaks away they're both panting hard.

"Fuck me," Max demands. "I want to feel you when I'm alone, so fuck me."

"Max," Jude groans, rolling his hips but it's not enough. It's like a wave. And waves are great, but he's long past days at the beach. 

His grip on Jude's hair loosens to a caress. "I need it," he says, low and right into Jude's ear. He can feel the force of Jude's thrusts increase even as the words leave his mouth, until he can't speak anymore even if he wants to. It rocks him and batters at his heart. 

He lets go of Jude and places both his hands above his head on the headboard, bracing himself. Jude's love-making is a full-on assault and he rides through it, just like he's ridden every high he's ever been on. 

Only this is better. This is real. Really real. Jude's hands are digging into his hips so hard it hurts, and he's sucking a bruise in the shape of his mouth into the skin beneath Max's jaw. 

Each mark and ache and throb is proof that he belongs to something bigger than himself. And it's not the army or his family or his circle of friends. He belongs to this, this nearly tangible love that he shares with Jude that doesn't have to be soft and squishy and sugary-sweet to be real. It can beat him like a punch and still feel just as good. In some ways, it feels better. 

The urge to close his eyes is intense as his orgasm builds. The sensory overload is dragging his eyelids down like gravity, but Max wants to see. He needs to see Jude as much as he needs to hear him grunting and feel him slamming into him. 

He's recording with his senses but he can't really capture the feeling he gets when Jude groans his name. It's not based in touch but it sends him spasming over the edge, hot and messy and completely without dignity.

When he finally gets his sanity back, Jude is still inside him. It's confusing and nerve-jangling and he blinks up at his lover curiously.

"You didn't-"

Jude's grin is pained. "No."

"Uh, why?"

His expression really isn't funny. It's not. It's downright scathing. It's just that Max can still feel him and that he's got the presence of mind to make that face is kind of hilarious. He can't help but laugh, and Jude groans long and low.

"Max," his voice is a warning but that just makes Max laugh harder. 

His whole body is shaking with it, loose and limp except for the laughter that wracks him. Jude moans his name again, bucking forward hard enough that without Max bracing himself, his whole body moves.

It's kind of beautiful and incredibly pleasurable to watch and feel Jude take his release. He's got nothing left to give, but it feels so good and he looks so fucking amazing that Max can help but gasp.

He's never actually seen Jude come before. They're usually so close on each other's heels that he misses it. But he sees it now, the tension in his shoulders, the lines of his clenched jaw. He wishes he had a camera, although there was no way he'd ever be able to explain a picture like that.

He brushes Jude's hair off his face as he slumps on top of him. Jude sprawls over him, sighs heavily and plants a gentle kiss on Max's ear, which is the only part of him within kissing distance.

"Love you," Jude murmurs, directly into the ear he's just kissed. It sends a whole different kind of pleasure through Max. 

"Love you, too," Max says, staring up at the ceiling, suddenly grateful. 

Some people lived their whole lives without this. Seventy, eighty years without someone loving them as much as Jude loves him, as much as he loves Jude. But he's got it. It's more than most people hope for. And if he does die, then at least he's got someone who'll miss him. Hell, he's got someone who'll miss him even if he doesn't. 

"Jude?"

"Yeah?" The response is drowsy but clear.

"I really do, man."

"What?"

"You know, love you. I really do. The big, scary kind."

Max has no doubt it's a supreme effort of will for Jude to lift his head. But he does, enough to stare directly into Max's eyes. "Then you'd best come home to me."

"I will."

"Is that a promise?"

"Yeah. Promise me something?"

"Anything." And Max knows he means it. 

"Promise me you'll take care of my sister while I'm gone?"

"I promise," Jude replies. He says it like he's being sworn into office. And maybe he is. Guardianship of a Carrigan isn't exactly the easiest position to take. Max knows that from experience.

"You won't have to for long. Just a year." 

Jude nods and lays himself back across Max. Max can feel him resting his nose in Max's hair. Neither of them says that a lot can happen in a year. It's not what either of them needs to think of. So they don't. 

They don't think of much of anything. Max is pretty happy to just lie in bed all day. It's completely unproductive, but it's what Max wants to do and Jude doesn't protest.

It's the most indulgent form of escapism. Sex and sleep and what could only be described as snuggling, if either of them were the type of men who used the word snuggle in conversation. 

Max doesn't worry about getting crumbs in the sheets from the sandwiches Jude throws together or spilling the beer he brings in from the kitchen or much of anything, really. Why bother? There're more important things he hasn't done - like pack - to worry about. And he will. Tomorrow. When he absolutely has to. 

The minutes and hours sort of blur together into one moment that lasts forever even as it flies by. Time passes in the play of shadows across the floor of the room. The longer they get, the tighter Max holds onto Jude.

He doesn't sleep that night. He spends the time he's not making love with Jude sitting awake and smoking like a chimney and trying to pretend that this is fine. That it's normal. 

Jude lets him. Jude's letting him get away with absolute murder, and isn't surprised at all when Max's will fails spectacularly at around three in the morning, when he sort of collapses in on himself, a trembling bundle of nerves that was once an incredibly together human being. 

"You're a right mess," Jude sighs, pulling him into his arms. Max hears no judgment, just a deep, oozing sadness. 

"Maybe they'll decide I'm unfit."

Jude presses his lips against Max's temple. It's soothing and warm and not even remotely sexual. "It'll be better come morning." 

"How?" Max asks, furious. "How can it possibly be better?"

"The wait'll be over," Jude replies. "I remember the day before I left England. The day before was bloody well torture. It was better once I was on my way out."

"It's not the same. You wanted to leave," Max snaps, pulling away. But Jude pulls right back, tugging him close against his chest.

"Doesn't matter. It's the waitin' that's killing ya. I can see it all over you. Just rest. There's nothing you nor I can do about this. So just let it be, Max." 

He can't. He physically and mentally can't. He's never really been able to get his brain to shut up. It always got him in trouble in school. His more tolerant professors at Princeton had claimed that if he could just get his thoughts in order, he could be brilliant. He'd never been able to. 

"Close your eyes," Jude murmurs. "Close your eyes and I'll kiss you." 

"I don't want-"

"Close `em." Jude orders and Max sighs and lets his eyes drift shut. The first kiss lands on his right eyelid. It's not what he was hoping for, but the tenderness is oddly relaxing. The second is on his left. The third is soft and warm on the skin between his brows. 

Four and five are on his cheekbones. Six is on the tip of his nose. Seven is on his forehead. Eight is on his chin. Nine is on his chin again. Ten is on the skin just above his upper lip. Twelve and thirteen are on each temple. Fourteen and fifteen are just beneath each ear, and Max loses count. 

He's methodical, literally covering Max in kisses. He doesn't leave an inch of Max's skin untouched by his lips. Jude's progress is slow and Max is half asleep by the time Jude works his way back to Max's mouth. 

He falls asleep at some point during the kiss that seems to last forever. It's not something he's ever done before but it sends him into dreams that he doesn't remember. 

He doesn't sweat or thrash in his sleep and when he wakes up, the fear isn't so heavy anymore. It's more of a resigned passenger. He can't kick it out of the car, but at least he's not fiddling with the radio knobs anymore. 

Jude's dressed in jeans when Max blinks awake. He's drawing again, as ever, and the sight is a comforting one. Max watches him work for a few minutes before he speaks.

"I should probably get up."

"You've got to meet with your sister before you leave." Jude agrees. "So you probably should." 

"It's warm," Max sighs and pushes himself up on one elbow. "Can I see?"

"It's rubbish."

"Can I see it anyway?"

Jude pulls the paper off the pad and hands it to him. It's a rough sketch, sort of abstract. He's seen Jude do things far more polished. But he recognizes his own face, and the bed they share. It's not right, because Jude's not in the picture, but even in strangely sharp lines, he can see everything Jude feels on that piece of paper.

He looks up and smiles. "My nose is a little big." 

Jude rolled his eyes. "Piss off."

"No, it's pretty perfect otherwise. Just ... a little less schnoz." He's laughing and that's sort of amazing. He hadn't thought he'd be able to today.

"Here," Jude says, walking over to the drawer where he seems to keep everything. He comes back with a thin folder and he drops it on the bed. "I had Desmond laminate them for me over at Rat. I want you to take `em with you."

Inside are two pictures. The first is a drawing. It's about the size of a postcard and it's of him and Lucy, sitting next to each other at a table, probably the one in the kitchen. Max isn't sure exactly when they did that, but he can see Lucy's smile shining out of the black lines, see his own face recorded in Jude's hand.

And second is a four by six photograph. Someone took it at that party a month ago, and it's everyone, all together. Lucy's in his lap and Jude's at his shoulder. Prudence is making a face at the camera and Jojo's got his arm around Sadie's shoulder. Desmond's sitting on the floor and Pam's standing behind Prudence. His New York family. The one he made for himself and the one he'll miss more than he'll miss his parents.

"Jude, man," Max says and that's all he can say really, because this feels so much like a good-bye he can't stand it. 

Jude shrugs and rubs at the back of his neck. "Keep `em with you, yeah?"

"Yeah. Always. Jesus." His throat burns and he tugs Jude down to him, kissing him, because it's just such a better option than crying, because this isn't like good-bye. It is good-bye. 

Everything after this is a farewell. He has to pack. He has to see Lucy. And he has to make the transport. He has to part with Jude here so that he can force himself to do what he has to.

"Good-bye, Jude," Max mumbles against Jude's lips because he doesn't think he'll be able to say it later. And he needs it said. It'll crush him if he doesn't.

"I don't know why you say good-bye, Max. This isn't good-bye." 

"Why?"

"I don't know. It's just not. I mean, goodbye's are forever. This isn't forever." 

"What do I say then?"

"See ya round?" Jude offers. There's a desperation in his voice with which Max is all too well acquainted. "See you later? I'll write? Anything else."

"How about I love you and I'll miss you. How's that?"

"Brilliant, that is. You take all of me with ya, Max. You'd best bring it back."

It's a threat and a promise and a declaration and Max falls into it. He falls into Jude. And he prays to a God he's not sure he believes in that it's not for the last time. 

 


End file.
